“We’ll probably pick up some highlights from the primary debates, when Trump did real well with ‘China’ and ‘tremendous,”’ Mueller says. “We don’t want to go to crazy with it because we can get people really, really drunk.” (For the uninitiated, every time the candidate of your choice utters a selected word, you must imbibe.) Scores are typically in the range of 30 to 50 sips, or, Mueller estimates, about three beers.

No Booing

Calendars have been marked around the world. Tristan Averett, an American who runs a consulting firm in Lisbon, is planning slumber parties; the debates will air at 2 a.m. in the Portuguese city. In Dayton, Ohio, Ryan Rushing will forgo a summer vacation or job so he can volunteer to help  Wright State University get ready for the first one on Sept. 26. Washington University in St. Louis will host the second on Oct. 9, and the University of Nevada in Las Vegas the third on Oct. 19.

Unlike primary debates, which are put on by media outlets, general-election battles are organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan nonprofit. They’re supposed to be cerebral affairs, with live audiences of 600 to 1,000 people who are asked to refrain from booing or shouting, and who in the past have generally complied. Any network can run them at no cost.
‘Unlike Any Other’

Sept. 26 will be 56 years to the day of the first televised general-election debate, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. It was watched by 66 million people in grainy black and white, and the four debates between the two drew 60 percent of U.S. households on average. Less than 40 percent tuned in for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012, Nielsen data show.

But “this election is unlike any election I’m familiar with,” says Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., the commission’s co-founder. “There’s a dramatic change going on in American culture with regards to politics, and we want to make sure that we can best inform the American people.”

To do that, he says, the commission is talking with “Facebook and Twitter and you-name-it social-media platform” to disseminate the events as widely as possible. Facebook launched a live-video streaming service last year, and Twitter has begun embedding live video into users’ timelines. The first Obama-Romney duel generated more than 10 million posts on Twitter, making it the most-tweeted U.S. political event -- another record waiting to be broken.

No-Commercial Rule

The Reagan-Carter spar pulled in 81 million viewers. For comparison, 114 million watched the 2015 Super Bowl, the biggest TV event in U.S. history. Globally, the trophy probably goes to the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, seen by what Nielsen reckons was 2 billion people, or almost one third of the world’s population.

The no-commercial rule is painful for companies, and a few may try to take advantage of debate fever; during the primaries, a Trojan ad showed different types of prophylactics being questioned by a moderator and arguing about which is “most qualified to be erected.” The Legal Sea Foods restaurant chain is brainstorming ideas, including the catchphrase, “There’s no debate, there’s no fresher fish than ours.”